


Terminator Drabbles and Ficlets

by Pouncer



Category: Terminator, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-14
Updated: 2009-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pouncer/pseuds/Pouncer





	Terminator Drabbles and Ficlets

#### For Serial Karma, _silicon, fog, viewscreen_

Whisky gold hair draped over John's shoulder while he guided the puddlejumper forward on instrumentation. The viewscreen showed only thick, grey mist.

Her voice, rough and low, whispered, "That's it. Keep going."

John ignored his nerves in favor of the Glock barrel pressed to his temple.

"You don't have to do this, Ms. Connor," he tried again, and gasped when fingernails found his jugular.

"Don't tell me what I have to do," she snarled.

John dared a quick glance at her face, her eyes and mouth haloed with tension.

He recognized her desperation, even if he didn't know the cause.  


#### For Iidoru, author's choice 

Her head ached. Trying to think through all the potential crisis points, determine what she could do to stop Skynet's rise – Sarah wished Kyle were here to help her plan.

John began to whimper, fussy for an opportunity to nurse. Sarah could use dinner herself, but decent food wasn't easy to find in this Mexican backwater.

She lifted her son from the drawer where he rested, snuggling him in close and cradling his head with her palm.

He latched onto her nipple and began to suckle, the future savior of humanity. She'd make him strong enough to bear the burden.

#### For Plum, John and Derek, teaching. 

"It's such a waste," John said with the sulkiness only a teenager can muster. "I'm not going to need to know how to analyze a poem after Judgment Day."

Derek glanced over to where John was flipping through textbooks. "You once told me finishing high school was one of the most important things you'd done."

John looked skeptical. "Really?"

"Really." Derek didn't volunteer that the end of the conversation was about making contacts and building networks among feuding cliques.

Sarah already thought John was too lackadaisical about his education. And she wouldn't make pancakes if she were angry at them.

#### For Elishavah, cookies. Double drabble.

Teenaged boys were a bottomless pit of hunger, as far as Sarah could tell.

"John!" she yelled. "Did you finish the Oreos again?"

He poked his head out of his bedroom, hair falling into his eyes. She should make him cut it, but that was a battle more hopeless than taking out a Terminator.

He was nonchalant. "Yeah."

"Did you put them on the list?"

"No."

"Then how will I know to get more?" Planning. Planning was key, and she'd tried to teach him but he never seemed to learn.

"We could bake," he offered. He always came up with another tactic. It was probably why he'd be able to defeat the machines, but it was damn frustrating to deal with every day.

"You want to bake," she said, not quite believing.

"Chocolate chip cookies?"

"You just want to eat the batter raw." She knew her son, even if she didn't always let him in on the secret.

His smile quirked the corners of his mouth, and she saw him shrug.

"Right. Bake." It wasn't more difficult than making nitroglycerin, and John started doing that years ago.

Sarah would tell Cameron to stay in the kitchen, though. Just in case.

#### For trobadora, Sarah and Cameron, endoskeleton, flesh, and skin. 

She should be used to this, Sarah knew. She'd plucked bullets from her nightmare turned protector, she'd watched John operate on silicon brains, and yet stitching flesh and skin back around Cameron's metal skeleton still made Sarah want to kill. Red eyes contrasted with a perfect voice, and everything was _wrong_.

But they needed Cameron, whole and not monstrous, to achieve their goals. Even Derek bowed to necessity, and he hated the machines with a passion that left Sarah remembering Kyle and wishing things could have been different.

But they weren't. She set needle to gash, and began to sew.

#### For maharet83: Bite. Derek/Jesse, 215 words. 

Their hair matched, Jesse finally noticed. Dark and thick and she wished his was longer so she could twine them together in ways that couldn't be undone.

John Connor's _uncle_ \-- what a mindfuck that was. Metal everywhere in the tunnels, wounded pouring in with blood everywhere, and their side was _losing_ because Connor couldn't see past his pet Terminators. As if you could trust programming to hold when they were _made_ to kill humans.

She'd watched him, the boy with floppy hair and an uncertain smile. She'd heard what Riley had to report about his likes and dislikes and vulnerabilities. Jesse still couldn't figure out why _this_ boy was so special, why he was the one that the survivors would follow into hell.

Derek's palm stroked over her ribcage, and Jesse let herself shiver in response. She leaned down to kiss his lush, full mouth, traced her tongue over the ink embedded in his skin.

When her hand crept downward, he was hard. His breath panted against her neck. John Connor could wait.

Jesse wanted her pleasure. There were so few to be found in her past, after all. She wrapped her knee around Derek and pulled him into her, fast and steady.

The stubble on his cheek scratched her breast. She didn't care.  


#### For dragonsinger: Vanquish. John Connor/Kate Brewster, 360 words.

His body was muscled perfection. Kate wished she could look at him and do anything but shudder. Her reaction to metal, no matter how aesthetically pleasing the form, was always to escape.

Or to kill, but this one would be a protector instead of a threat. Once they were done.

She looked over to the tech, busy typing at the programming terminal.

"Will he understand?" Her memories couldn't be trusted, not with all the instances where John had meddled with time. It was vital that this one did nothing but protect John Connor.

The pattern his blood had made against the tunnel wall had reminded her of a Pollack painting, one she'd seen during a school field trip to San Francisco. Before the bombs fell. Before her life turned into a surrealist narrative that Kafka would have killed to write.

The tech nodded, fingers flying over the keyboard. "His only purpose will be to defend John Connor against any and all threats."

Kate traced a fingertip down a bicep. The Terminator's skin was cool. "Make him listen to me," she said suddenly.

The tech looked up, startled. "Ma'am?"

She wished the machine's eyes were open, that she could judge his trustworthiness. "Do it," she told the tech.

She was John Connor's designated successor. She didn't need to explain her whims.

And if she was right, her husband would be beside her, where he belonged, instead of buried beneath an unmarked grave.

She wanted him back, wanted the comfort of his heartbeat against her ear, the softness of his skin under her lips. This cyborg might have taken John from her now, but he could save him then, and warn him about trusting familiar faces.

"Is the time displacement equipment ready?" she asked her aide, standing silent behind her until now.

Jesse nodded, "Yes, ma'am." Her Australian vowels were still exotic no matter how long she'd been attached to Kate's command.

"Let's do this, then," Kate said, determined that her mad start would ripple through time and return the love of her life to his rightful place by her side.

They'd vanquish Skynet together, the way it was meant to be.  


#### For draickinphoenix: Uncanny. Crossover with Highlander, 212 words.

That Adam guy was _strange_. General Perry knew the world had gone topsy-turvy on Judgment Day, but a dark-haired man he'd never met before (he'd never met any of them _before_) who could scout irradiated territory and survive, over and over again, was especially bewildering.

The way Adam's head jerked up sometimes, and his eyes scanned a tunnel until he locked on another soldier, another man who looked wary and like a fighter, and both of them nodded at each other then separated, struck Perry as odd too.

Connor wouldn't hear a word against Adam, though. Blond hair against black, bladed nose next to snub, hovering over a tactical map of Skynet positions and debating the best avenues of attack. Adam had an uncanny ability to discern the winning approaches, the ways the hard-scrabble human survivors could fling themselves against hardened bases and not only survive but triumph.

With that kind of track record, no wonder Connor listened to Adam. Even if sometimes Perry couldn't understand the words he said, the accent lilting his voice, the expression in his eyes that said he'd seen worse destruction before, and would live through the turmoil, no matter what.

Better a survivor than a loser.  


#### For larah33: The Morning After. Sarah Connor/Kyle Reese, 244 words.

Sarah woke up warm and contented, wrapped around her lover. Without opening her eyes, she ran her fingers down his chest, relishing smooth skin and defined muscles.

His voice rumbled a purr, and Sarah's lips turned up in a smile. Her body ached in the best ways. It'd been too long since she'd brought a guy home. She stretched, and his arm shifted. There was a scar, a large one.

Something wasn't right.

It came back to her in a rush: the deaths of other Sarah Connors, the man trying to kill her, Reese. _Kyle_. Protecting her. Sarah breathed in sharply, fear returning as she remembered.

"Hey," Kyle said.

Sarah looked at him, so young and so skilled in defending, fumbling yet earnest when she gave into her attraction. She'd never felt connected like that before, like sex went beyond the physical into realms she'd not explored.

"Good morning," Sarah said, and shivered when Kyle traced down her shoulder blade.

He pressed a kiss to her temple. "Sensitive," he said, before doing it again.

"Should we leave?" Sarah asked, but her nails were already sinking into his hip.

Kyle's thigh nudged between her legs. "We've got a little time."

Sarah met his mouth against her nipple with a whimper. She wished they had nothing but time, so they could spend it all together.

Since that wasn't possible, she'd steal a few more minutes, and map the terrain of Kyle's soul so she'd never forget.

Better a survivor than a loser.  


#### For noveltea: Abundance. 204 words.

"Can you get groceries today?" Sarah asked just after John left for school.

Derek had been planning to do some recon of the neighborhood, check out the places to avoid and the places they could lose pursuers, but he knew Sarah was hot to investigate something the machine had told her.

"Sure," he said.

"Don't forget the list." She slid a piece of paper, full of scribbles, across the breakfast table.

Later, walking the aisles of Ralph's, Derek had to stop himself from hoarding staples. It was still bizarre, seeing the abundant produce and bread and meat for sale. He remembered scavenging for cans, disregarding expiration dates and wolfing down pears in syrup because they were _sweet_, and he hadn't eaten anything sweet in forever. Kyle was gone by then, lost to Skynet, and Derek didn't share his treasure with anyone. Didn't have anyone to share it with, no matter how rare.

Once the sun was blocked by fallout, nothing had a chance to grow on the surface.

The cashier looked at Derek's collection of cereal and milk and apples. "Got a family, huh?"

Derek stopped counting twenties and blinked.

He'd never thought of it that way before.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I do."  


#### For missyvortexdv: Prudence. Cameron/John Connor. 118 words.

The T-888 advanced with a complicated apparatus held in its hands. Cameron could not determine the purpose of the tangle of wires and tubes; prudence dictated that she treat it as a lethal threat.

She turned to John and told him, "Run."

He gave her a brief look, and his face was set in the expression she'd learned to label "anger."

Cameron braced herself for objections, but John didn't argue. He ran toward the lemon grove and their vehicle.

A decision tree of contingency plans flickered through Cameron's processor. Time elapsed and distance would determine where they could rendezvous.

For now, she would repel this attack. Perhaps she could investigate the T-888's invention later. John would like that.  


#### For nelliewu: Serenade. 175 words.

Birds twittered outside the bedroom window as dawn broke over the house. Derek woke suddenly, startled into alertness.

He couldn't get used to the sounds of nature, not after so many years in the tunnels. The surface he knew was a place of ash and ruins, with laser zings barely announcing an assault before the H-K's hovered overhead and death descended.

For all that Sarah recognized what was coming, she hadn't lived it. She could imagine, but she couldn't _know_, not the way Derek did. Maybe that was why she let the metal stay.

Derek wanted to stuff a grenade up the machine's ass, or at least to grab its chip from under that fake brown hair and break it into shards, but Sarah said no. Derek obeyed her orders, mostly, even when he disagreed. Sarah had strategic sense. If anyone could stop Judgment Day, it was her.

Footsteps passed his door, John yelled something about a world history exam, and all Derek could think about was how precious it was to hear birdsong again.


End file.
